by Karen Ranney
She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. “Is it your intention to simply treat me as you would a stranger? Or someone whose name you can’t remember? An Edinburgh acquaintance, perhaps, that you haven’t seen for a while?”
When he didn’t respond, she turned to leave him again. When he didn’t call her back, when he made no comment at all, she glanced at him over her shoulder to find him looking at her. She wished he didn’t have such striking brown eyes or that way of regarding something so intently. She wanted to ask what he was thinking. She wanted, even more so, even more foolishly, to ask him what he thought of her.
Before she could counsel herself that such an act was foolish, if not downright idiotic, she turned and marched back to him, stopping only when she was directly in front of him. His smile had disappeared but that intent gaze remained. She knew why, now, his look was so troublesome. His eyes were brown, true, but the center of them was black and wide, deep and dark like a loch with overhanging trees, causing the water to appear mysterious, and not a little frightening.
“Were you displeased with me last night?”
Oh, what a foolish girl she was. What a simpleton. But she didn’t pull back the question. Nor did she mitigate it with an explanation. She simply let it stand between them, floating in the air unanswered. And then she made it worse, by adding yet another statement. “I thought it wonderful.”
His eyes changed, so imperceptibly that if she hadn’t been studying him so intently, she’d never have seen it. A light flickered, like an underwater lantern below the surface of the lake.
“I wouldn’t be displeased to do it again,” she said. “That is, if you have any interest in doing so. I would like, very much, to do it again.”
This time, before he could say anything or, worse, not say anything at all, she left him, walking briskly across the courtyard and feeling his stare on her back the whole time.
Chapter 8
Marshall was never completely free of demons, not even in the Egypt House, one of his favorite places at Ambrose. There were times when the voices swirled around the statues and hung low above the marble floor. Occasionally he thought he saw a creature with a cat’s head trailing a scarf behind a pillar, or the very tip of Amenhotep’s beard showing beside a doorway. When those moments came, he told himself they were the same visions and the same voices he always heard. These were not Egyptian ghosts or specters from thousands of years ago. These were simply manifestations of his madness. If he were in the middle of a fallow field, he would see something that did not belong there. No doubt the earth would speak to him, or the weeds rise up and twist themselves into some sort of creature.
This time, however, he kept seeing something—someone—that truly shouldn’t be there, and this ghost wore scent. He was accustomed to auditory hallucinations, as well as visions, but he’d never before smelled attar of roses in the morning air at Ambrose. Dust, yes, and that strange almost cedar smell emanating from some of the mummies.
But then, he’d never been married before, either.
Sometimes all it took to appreciate one day from another was for something unusual to happen. A storm in the middle of a sunny afternoon, the unexpected appearance of an old friend, a few hours without pain—they were all ordinary events made slightly unusual, enough that they were marked and remembered.
For Marshall, that moment of appreciation had come at dawn, when he’d awakened feeling the simple and curious emptiness of the day. Nothing hurt, nothing felt wrong. Above all, there were no memories or fragments of dreams to haunt him. If he’d had hallucinations the night before, he couldn’t recall them.
Not one bloody, tortured man had visited him.
There was no broken furniture. No blood to be found on the walls or the floor. There was no one standing inside the door, waiting for him to rouse so that he could be regaled with the horror of his behavior the previous night.
Had marriage unexpectedly brought him peace?
It would have been pleasant to sleep beside his bride, but Marshall couldn’t take that chance. He might have awakened like a banshee, howling through the halls of Ambrose. Or worse—he might have seen her as an enemy, someone to destroy, a legacy of his imprisonment in China.
Thanks to his jailers in Peking, for seven months his life had been proscribed down to the minute. Sunrise to sunset, each moment was marked and measured against the day before.
He’d been so damn hopeful in the first weeks, believing each day that someone would come for them. The sound of booted feet through the brick corridors had inspired hope that he and his forty men would be rescued soon. After all, they were emissaries of the Crown, representatives of the greatest monarch the world had ever known. Even the Chinese emperor could not ignore Queen Victoria’s might.
But it appeared as if the world had forgotten them, and the whole of China and the British Empire battled silently and in secrecy.
After three months, Marshall settled into a routine. He began to view anything different that happened with suspicion. Any sudden noise was cause for alarm. Any deviation in his ordered existence meant someone was going to die, or the Chinese had developed some new type of torture. Nothing new was ever good.
Somehow he’d carried that suspicion back to Ambrose, living in that fashion for the last year.
Davina was new. His marriage was new. So far, he wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about either. He had a suspicion, however, that nothing in his well-ordered world was going to remain the same.
Davina McLaren Ross. Davina. He repeated her name several times in the silence of the room, and each time it sounded as if a bit of magic had rubbed off on him.
Davina.
Here was a woman who was not overawed either by his consequence or by his past accomplishments. She hummed with intensity, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks pink with passion.
She’d actually raised her voice to him. Were you displeased with me last night? On the contrary, he’d been amazed. Enchanted.
How odd to be so fixated on one’s wife. Wife, a word he tested several times, speaking it aloud in the silence of his office. She was nothing like he’d expected. But then his life was filled lately with unexpected events, not the least of which was his own madness.
He could still see her standing in the courtyard, a tension in her stance, a fiery sort of energy that was too much like fear. She’d determinedly forced her chin up and stared at him directly, very concisely telling him that she wanted him to be a husband in all ways.
He’d sent his solicitor for a kitten and the man had brought him back a tiger. His amusement was short-lived. Kitten or tiger, it mattered not. Davina McLaren Ross was an impediment to his life. She was going to be a distraction, he could tell. Hell, the night before had proven that only too well.
It was one thing to keep her distant with an air of indifference. What did he do about his own interest?
Of all the scenarios he could have envisioned about his marriage, Davina McLaren fit none of them. Their relationship was no more than that of two cordial strangers—or two strangers who’d been forced together. Yet the meeting earlier had proved to be uncomfortable, and unforgettable. The night before had proven even more difficult to forget.
Why the hell had he let her walk away?
Once he’d been facile in group situations, capable of speaking on a vast array of topics to myriad groups of people. He could converse in six languages, could swear in ten, and had been fluent in the easy quip, the impersonal banality.
For years he’d believed less in constancy than in variety. He couldn’t even count the women he’d bedded, and if forced to pick each one of them out of a group, he couldn’t swear he could do so.
Life had been an unending round of pleasures: the best food, the best wine, and the loveliest women. He’d been awarded success for simply being himself; charming, urbane, and filled to the brim with tact. He was handsome, titled, wealthy, well-educated, and had impeccable antecedents.
China, however
, had put an end both to his social life and to his indiscriminate hedonism. Pride dictated that his nights be spent alone. Celibacy was easier than worrying whether the hallucinations would visit him and how quickly tales of his madness or his addiction to opium would spread.
Even in his marriage he had to be vigilant.
Still, he’d wanted to kiss her this morning, and thread his fingers through her hair, loosen her very proper plaits to see if she smiled at his daring. He wanted to kiss her throat to see if her pulse beat as strong as his.
Instead he’d sent her away. Prudent Marshall. Wise Marshall. Mad Marshall. He stared down at the desktop, seeing not the blotter, but her face.
I wouldn’t be displeased to do it again.
Resolutely he pushed Davina from his mind and returned to his task. Several moments later Marshall stood, stretching. This office looked out on Aidan’s Needle, so close that he could open the window, reach out, and touch the tip of the obelisk. He remembered the workmen warning that the obelisk was being erected too close to the Egypt House. If it ever fell, the structure might well be damaged. Marshall had given orders that work was to continue just as his father had wished, perhaps as a fitting memorial to the man. As apart as they had been in life, his parents had been close in death. His mother had died in May, and his father followed in June. Aidan had not lived to see his most prized acquisition set in its place of honor.
Marshall sat at the desk once more and pulled a sheaf of papers toward him.
In the last years of his life, his father had become almost maniacally acquisitive. Even after his death, so many shipments had arrived at Perth that Marshall had no choice but to simply warehouse the lot. Upon his return from China, he’d begun the transfer to Ambrose of his father’s Egyptian treasures. Each week, another wagon or cart arrived from Edinburgh, and each week, Marshall was surprised by what his father had purchased or taken from Egypt.
As long as he could remember, Aidan Ross had been fascinated with Egypt and its culture. He’d studied Champollion’s notes on the Rosetta Stone and conferred with scholars with a similar interest. More than once—and more than once in his mother’s hearing—his father had expressed a desire to live his entire life in Egypt.
His mother had made no comment whatsoever. She’d simply raised her right eyebrow and fixed a look on his father that would have frozen a pharaoh.
Once Marshall had been as acquisitive as his father, but he’d been fascinated with Asia and the Far East. He no longer had a love for all things Oriental. He no longer wanted anything around to remind him of his travels to China or his ultimate imprisonment there.
I wouldn’t be displeased to do it again.
He wasn’t surprised to hear her voice in his mind. Her declaration had been surprising, perhaps even shocking, and certainly tempting. She wanted him to be a husband. Perhaps she’d deluded herself that there was something likable about him, something to admire about Marshall Ross, Earl of Lorne.
If so, he should go about the business of explaining that she was wrong. There was nothing in his nature or his character to recommend him as a spouse. She believed him to be someone he wasn’t. All he could offer was his title and his wealth, both of which could be passed to an heir, or a daughter. For that reason alone she’d been brought to Ambrose. Perhaps last night he’d given her a child and there would be no further necessity for him to visit her.
My parents adored each other. What a fresh and unspoiled innocence. She wanted the same from their marriage. What would she say to the truth about him?
Perhaps she never needed to know.
She was beautiful, and he’d been lonely. The occasion of his marriage had given him an excuse to bed an attractive woman. He’d needed her, temporarily, and yet that momentary weakness made him feel strangely vulnerable now.
“We learn to accept what we know,” he said aloud. Amenhotep smiled benignly at him from the corner.
Not too long ago, he’d seen Amenhotep walk, a hallucination that had shaken him badly. What had Davina said about courage? Courage wasn’t like chocolate at all—it was the bitterest alum, a taste that curled the tongue and soured the stomach. Courage was the enemy of peace. Courage kept a man struggling to live when it was easier to simply give up and surrender.
I would like to do it again. Here she was, in his mind once more.
What answer could he give to that? So would I, Davina. If I were sane. So would I, if I were not afraid that I’d see things move and see you grow into a two-headed Hydra and then laugh at me with bulging red lips dripping with blood.
Well, marriage was certainly not what she’d expected. She’d been amazed, fascinated, delighted, astounded, thrilled, annoyed, and made miserable—all within the span of twenty-four hours. What would the next day bring?
Davina was almost afraid to discover.
She brushed away her tears as she walked briskly back to Ambrose. All of a sudden the house that had been so empty was swarming with servants. She saw two of them through the large windows.
Instead of returning to her room, a feat necessitating having to travel past a footman and up the stairs where a maid was industriously dusting, Davina simply sat on one of the slate benches in the courtyard and pretended an interest in the branches above her head.
“Your Ladyship,” Nora said, “you shouldn’t be sitting out here in the bright morning sun.”
The young maid was suddenly a welcome companion and a reminder of home in a strange place. “The tree shelters me from the worst of the sun,” she said. “But I won’t remain here long. Do you know if my aunt has awakened yet, Nora?”
The girl hesitated. “I’m sorry, Your Ladyship. You didn’t know? Mrs. Rowle left Ambrose over an hour ago.”
Davina turned her head and looked at Nora. “No,” she said, in violation of her aunt’s dictate to not reveal anything to the servants. “I didn’t know. Did she say nothing? Leave me a note?”
Nora suddenly looked at a loss, almost the way Davina felt. She reached out and patted the girl’s hand in reprieve. “It’s of no consequence, Nora.”
Nora responded with a curtsy. Never before had she bowed so low or held the pose for quite so long. Was it due to Davina’s new rank? Or simply because the young maid pitied her? Poor Davina McLaren, married one day. She felt alone on a tiny island in the middle of a suddenly dark and menacing ocean.
“I’ll fetch your parasol, Your Ladyship.”
“Never mind. I’ll return to my room,” she said, standing.
The servants had multiplied, dusting close to the windows, intent upon those tables that were already shiny and without a speck of dust. Were they that curious about her? Had they no other duties?
As they mounted the steps, Nora turned to her. “There’s breakfast in the family dining room, Your Ladyship. I’ve been shown around this morning. I don’t think I’ll get you lost.”
“Thank you, Nora,” Davina said. “I find that I’m not hungry.”
She turned her head and met several pairs of interested eyes. One woman in particular, attired in a dark blue, long-sleeved dress with a row of black buttons down the front, stared back at her for one long, unsmiling moment. Her blond hair was almost too brilliant and her lips looked too colorful to be natural. In her arms she held a ledger. Davina suspected her identity before Nora spoke.
“That’s Mrs. Murray,” Nora said. “The housekeeper. And a very strict one as well.”
“If she finds me so interesting, she should at least introduce herself. In fact, she should have presented herself to me the moment I was married.”
Nora glanced at her, but didn’t say anything.
“Very well,” Davina conceded. “Perhaps not that very moment. But certainly after enough time had passed.”
“I don’t mean to defend the woman, Your Ladyship, but you’ve been married less than a day.”
Davina didn’t respond to that criticism, well deserved though it might be.
“Go and fetch her, Nora,” she said. “We
shall end all this staring and speculation right this moment.”
There was no need for Nora to leave her side. It seemed as if Mrs. Murray had the same idea. She was advancing across the immaculate wooden floor, her glance sweeping from side to side with the intensity of an inspector. If the maid in charge of cleaning this area of Ambrose had not been diligent in her duties, Davina didn’t have a doubt that Mrs. Murray would upbraid her fiercely.
The woman stopped five feet away, wrapping her arms around the ledger as she executed a perfect curtsy.
“Your Ladyship,” she said, “welcome to Ambrose.”
The effrontery of that remark struck Davina immediately, as well as the irritation she promptly felt upon hearing it. Who was Mrs. Murray to welcome her to Ambrose?
But she was conscious of Nora’s presence at her side as well as the voice of her aunt, forever counseling Davina on decorum. Anger is an emotion, Davina, as powerful as fear. If you let someone know they’ve angered you, you’ve given them a powerful weapon.
“Thank you, Mrs. Murray. I’ve been told that you are the housekeeper. How long have you been at Ambrose?”
“For a great many years, Your Ladyship,” she said.
What a very agreeable voice she had. Did she practice it? It was on the upper range of female voices, however, and could easily turn into a screech. The smile was similar in quality, easy, perfect, and absolutely charming. She must have practiced it for hours.
“Have you?” Davina said. “How very interesting.”
“I have found it to be so, Your Ladyship.”
There were scores of questions she would have asked the housekeeper if the woman had been somewhat older and less attractive. Or if the sudden twinkle in Mrs. Murray’s lovely blue eyes didn’t irritate her immensely.
“I need a few maids to assist me,” Davina said. “And a footman or two.”
“We have a full complement of guests, Your Ladyship. Our staff is seeing to their needs.”
Davina raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve no one to spare to see to mine, Mrs. Murray? Or to the earl?”
